Eco-friendly Trick-or-Treating

• You might not realize it, but trick-or-treating is a very wasteful tradition.

• Children collect big amounts of sweets wrapped in candy wrappers. These shiny covers are not recyclable and go straight to the landfill. Most of the wrappers of your childhood candy are probably still somewhere on this planet.

• Also, kids generally walk around with plastic pumpkin shape buckets. Some families might reuse them from one year to another. Unfortunately, many families will throw them away and buy a new one the following year.

• If you take a different approach, you can save the planet from many wrappers and from the plastic bucket. You will stand out and may inspire others to take the same actions!

And Now What?

• Eco-friendly bucket - To collect and carry the treats in an eco-friendlier way, you can use any cloth tote bag or a pillowcase. It is light, and it will hold a lot of candy. If you want to give it a more festive look, you can use fabric paint to decorate the bag. Let the kids enjoy this activity, and have them paint Halloween images on them. Keep the bag for the following year and the years to come.

• Eco-friendly treats - The other side of the trick-or-treating is the candy you give to others. If you want to noticeably diminish the waste on Halloween, making your own treats is the way to go.

• To make it easy and fun for the kids, you can just make your favorite gingerbread man recipe. Let the kids cut the dough in Halloween shapes and use colored icing to decorate and create their own spooky ideas.